à la carte spirit by ilona fried
Authenticity
On the Importance of the Right Container
Imagine you’re handed a precious elixir that requires immediate refrigeration. All you have is a used plastic supermarket container. You wash, rinse and wipe it dry before transferring the elixir. The next day you notice a leak from a pinprick in the bottom. Quickly, you tape it. Shortly thereafter, you observe that the amount of … Continue reading
Yes, I am a S.N.O.B.
The first time I was called a snob, it wasn’t to my face. Rather, it was written in a bathroom stall in the girls’ locker room at my high school. To see my name and my boyfriend’s inked and linked with “snob” stung, even more so since my pants were down. I was 15 and … Continue reading
Notes From the Potato Patch
While I’m terrible with houseplants and have never tried gardening, I’ve long had an unexplored curiosity about how food is brought from the earth. Traipsing through hundreds of miles of vineyards and other agricultural land in Spain last fall, along El Camino de Santiago, brought that interest closer to the surface. And now I’m living … Continue reading
What Does it Mean to “Arrive”?
A week ago Sunday a friend and I got together to practice being present. We sat at a shaded table outside a tea house and spent a moment taking a breath together. Then, we began to notice what was around us. That morning the wind was whimsical, its temperature and direction varying moment by moment, … Continue reading
Commitment: Choice or Coercion?
Life has, again, presented me with an opportunity to write about commitment. Towards the end of June an acquaintance invited me to an event in Denver whose venue was capping the number of guests. It was unclear what the cap was and at what point it would be reached. If I wanted to attend, I … Continue reading
à la carte spirit by ilona fried 
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